How to do Long-Tail Keyword Research for SEO

This complete guide deals with Long-tail keywords research for SEO which is especially important for a new blog. Oh! Wait a minute. Before diving into the guide, for those who don’t know what keyword research is, read the below paragraph.

The process of optimizing a blog post for common queries that the user types in the search engines, with intent to show up in SERPs for that search query is called keyword SEO. The process of finding such common search queries is called keyword research.

What are long-tail keywords?

Keywords formed by 3 or more words, depending upon the competition of the niche. In blogging niche, a keyword with 4 or more words in it is considered as long-tail keywords.

These long tail keywords are often natural queries that start with why, what and how.

Users searching for a particular answer or a fact often make long tail queries.

Why long-tail keywords?

With the ever-growing number of websites and blogs, it’s difficult to target short, competitive keywords initially. In order to make a head start for your new blog, it’s always advised to target long-tail keywords.

Sometimes even popular blogs cannot rank for popular keywords.
Therefore, long-tail keywords research strategy is the best for all sorts of blogs.

Some examples of long-tail keywords

Consider this very blog post.

Short keyword: Long-tail keywordsLong-tail keyword: How to Do Long Tail Keyword Research, how to find long tail keywords and etc.

The first keyword (Long-tail keywords) definitely has high competition and search volume. Competition is so high that the blog post will not be listed in top 10 pages of Google at all.

The second keyword (How to do long-tail keywords research) has low competition and decent search volume. It can be listed in the top 10 pages of Google SERPs.

How to find effective long-tail keywords for SEO?

If you are a regular reader of GBT, you probably know that I always like to take examples. Let me continue the tradition.

Let me take the example of how I did keyword research for this post.

Finding an effective topic is the first step. So before writing this post, I scratched my head a little bit and decided to write a blog post on long-tail keyword research.

Put the base keyword in Google search.

For this blog post, the base keyword is “long-tail keywords”, I put it in Google search. And took a list of all suggestions returned by wildcard and as well as casual search.

Here's the dirty little hack: Just put the cursor at the beginning or middle of the query you are searching for. With this, you get even more search suggestions.

I am not satisfied with the long-tail keywords suggested by Google.

Again here's the goldmine.

Vary the base query, take a note of all the related searches that Google returns to you.

If you are not satisfied with the results, there are some tools to make your job easier.

Here they are.

Go for UberSuggest

I headed over to UberSuggest and typed in the base keyword.
It gave me the long list of long-tail keywords, by making use of Google suggestions.

UberSuggest gave me only suggestions without search volume. For search volume, I used to use the Google Keyword Planner.

Make use of Google search console

You heard it right. You can make use of Google search console for researching the keywords, for which your site is already appearing.

Keywords with impressions but no clicks

For this, you need to go under "Search analytics".

Click on the checkbox in front of impressions. Look for the keywords for which there are no clicks and more impressions.

Now head over to those blog posts, optimize them for the above long tail keywords by adding new relevant content. By this, you eventually start ranking higher and start driving traffic from various keywords.

Great tools and ideas to get long tail keywords

Ubersuggest Alternative: It is a tool similar to UberSuggest. However, it displays the search volume and CPC without the help of any extension or plugin. If you are tired of using Ubersuggest for any reason, I strongly suggest you try this tool once. It's free.

Google Auto Suggest Keyword Tool
This tool is powered by Google suggest. You can also make use of wildcard characters. This is the only feature that makes this tool outstanding.

Soovle
Suggests you long-tail keywords instantly, on typing. It fetches suggestions simultaneously from Google, Wikipedia, Yahoo, Amazon, YouTube, Answers.com.You can just export the keywords using simple buttons on the top-left corner of the page.

Google Keyword Suggest ToolThis tool from Webmaster World is exactly similar to Ubersuggest. It suggests from Google, Bing, Amazon, and YouTube at once. It also allows exporting of keyword data.

Web Seer
Best Google suggest visual tool. It lets you display Google suggestion in the visual format. It's great fun using. It also displays the suggestions simultaneously as you type.

Long tail pro
It is the best keyword research tool available in the market today. Although this tool costs you some bucks, it's worth it. The profit you generate with the help of keywords that this tool suggests can easily repay the amount you expended for buying this tool.

With this tool, you just need to plug in the seed keyword. This tool generates 100s of highly profitable keywords in seconds.Long tail pro costs you $97 one-time payment.
The only drawback of Long Tail Pro is that you need the platinum version of the tool which costs you $397 to check keyword competitiveness and get bonus features.
In the next section, I will explain how to calculate keyword competition manually, more effectively.

Incoming search terms hack. Some sites and blogs display the search terms users used to land on their page. You can refer that section of blogs to find some of the untapped long tail keyword ideas to target in your blog posts.
Use the search modifier keyword "incoming search terms"Above are the keywords that people are using to land on the page.

Analyze the competition for the keywords

I use Google search to analyze competition, I find analyzing competition within Google search effective and accurate when compared to the Google Keyword planner. Google keyword planner does not contain search volumes for many of the effective long-tail keywords.

You can refer my detailed guide on pinpointing the keyword competition. In this post, I have explained how to determine the competition of the keywords using tools like Google search, SEMrush (review), SERPstat (read an awesome SERPstat review by Mohan here), MozBar and by using your common sense.

The analysis of keyword competition is important. Because, targeting a long tail blindly, and writing a blog post, does not drive you the results.

Optimize the blog post for the keyword

After some research on competition of keywords, I found “How to Do Long Tail Keyword Research” to be effective for this blog post.

Now, I optimized this blog post for the above long-tail keyword. I included the keyword in the blog post title, blog permalink, Meta description, ALT tags, throughout the post.

In order to make the post title more targeted and LSI-friendly, I appended “for SEO: a complete guide” to my long-tail keyword. Now I targeted some more long-tail keywords like “Guide for long-tail keywords research”, “Long-tail keywords research for SEO”. Along with these, I got a meaningful title.

If you're still struggling to find profitable, long tail keywords for your content, you may consider buying Long Tail Keyword-Pro.
It is the best long-tail research tool, till date. It's the tool, that presents you the best keyword competitiveness and effectiveness.

The initial investment on the tool is paid back to you via great results.

Final wordsWithout quality content, no blog post can hit the first page of SERPs. One day, when Google adapts artificial intelligence to completely understand the content, the majority of the current SEO strategies will be replaced by quality-based strategies. Therefore, quality content is evergreen.

I use this strategy for researching effective long-tail keywords for my blog. I bet you too will at least check UberSuggest after reading this.

I hope you enjoyed this guide. If you are benefited from this guide, kindly reward me by not disappointing the buttons on the top that followed you throughout the guide.

DISCLOSURE

This post may contain affiliate links, meaning that if you click on one of the links and purchase an item, we may receive a commission (at no additional cost to you). All opinions are our own and we do not accept payments for positive reviews.

In long tail keyword research Googe KW tool is better to be paired with tools like SERPstat. Gives me greater span and insight into competition level. Long tails can be artificially twisted – Google will show incorrect competition level for such keywords.

Thanks for sharing a great post for keyword research it's really helpful for me. I have no any idea about how to use google analytics in Google search console but after reading your post I know that how it's important our us.

Great conclusion about AI and its influence. Thanks for your experience, Akshay. You have big experience and understanding in keyword research tools. Can you share your opinion about our internal similar long tail tool? – https://kparser.com
I hope you'll find some really unique functions in usability for yourself.

About Akshay Hallur

Hi, I’m Akshay Hallur. The founder of this blog GoBloggingTips. I’m a professional full-time blogger, an internet marketer, and a trainer. I’m here to help bloggers like YOU to create an outstanding blog and earn money from it.